Our Level Editor Revamp
Here are a couple of screenshots of our revamped level editor. We finally decided to redo the old prototype after the glui interface controls outlived their usefulness. While glui is a great interface library for building cross-platform interfaces, Apple’s AppKit offers a huge number of interface controls that we simply couldn’t ignore any longer.
We were able to build this new version in about two weeks, part time. This quick turnaround was largely to due Apple’s interface builder – it simply makes OSX interface development ridiculously easy.
We also separated large chunks of logic out into a clean interface, so the underlying interface controller can be plugged into other platforms if required. The eventual goal with this is to build a level designer for the iPad, so people can make their own levels and publish them. Watch this space!
The screenshots below are taken from a development machine. The editor is WYSIWYG – you choose a shape type to draw on the screen (square, cylinder, etc), and then you draw it on the screen by clicking and dragging your mouse. Easy, huh? After that, you give the object properties via a materials menu. The materials determine physics properties of the object, so a wood object will be lighter and slightly more bouncy than a metal object. There’s a bunch of other things you can do that I won’t go into. Suffice to say, we’re really proud of the editor.
